The development of the 3.6-km NH Bypass-Thammanam-Pullepady-M.G. Road as a four-lane stretch is yet to take off due to the inordinate delay in finalising its alignment.
The road’s development is also hamstrung by the Revenue department’s delay in handing over the stretch to the Public Works department (PWD), the agency that will own the road. This has left landowners on the corridor and Ernakulam District Residents’ Associations’ Apex Council (EDRAAC), that has been demanding fast-tracking of the road’s development, high and dry.
The over three-decade-old stalemate over developing the road that would considerably lessen traffic congestion at Palarivattom and Vyttila, and also decongest S.A. Road and Banerjee Road, prompted people to ponder why Kochi was being ignored, while roads were being developed and flyovers were being built to cater to increasing number of vehicles in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, said Jayakumar S. Das, a landowner in the Thammanam-Pullepady corridor.
That the road project is yet again bogged down by delays after the impetus a couple of years ago shows that the PWD, Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB), Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) and the Revenue department must get their act together. Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode were able to augment roads under projects like CRIP (City Road Improvement Project), which Kochi did not get. Hence, Kochiites and also visitors to the city were banking on the 3.6-km road to lessen congestion on arterial roads. Surprisingly, the government machinery is yet to act effectively, despite deadlines set by the Kerala High Court. Unlike most other projects, people were willing to surrender their land for the road project, since they were unable to do any transaction with it during the past many years, he added.
Sources in the PWD, whose design wing was tasked with readying the alignment for the road that ought to be developed at 22-m width, said its personnel were in the last leg of the ‘investigation’ to ready an alignment that would be submitted to the KIIFB for its clearance. The KIIFB executive committee would have to take a call and suggest changes if any. The alignment and technical details of a two-lane bridge that would be built beside Pullepady bridge too ought to be finalised.
On whether the road would have a bicycle track that has been mandated in new road projects in urban areas, they said it would depend on the final alignment and a letter submitted by the project director concerned. The width and other parameters of the median, drains and duct would find mention in the DPR that would be readied once the alignment was finalised. The focus at present is on readying the alignment for the ‘right of way’.
Sources in the Kochi Corporation said the inordinate delay in realising the road would be taken up with the District Collector and the MLAs concerned.
